


Dust to Dust

by BlueJay_Silvertongue



Series: Chronicles of WonderPosion [4]
Category: Wonder Woman (2017)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Introspection, Isabel runs away from Diana in Germany and returns to Spain and finds her brother, Set between chapter 4 and 5 of Hatred, graveyards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2018-06-25
Packaged: 2019-02-16 01:23:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,052
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13043595
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueJay_Silvertongue/pseuds/BlueJay_Silvertongue
Summary: Three times Isabel Maru visits the graveyard after returning to Spain.





	1. Alone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isabel finally returns to Spain, three years after the end of the Great War.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter begins the morning after Isabel and Diana spend the night together in Germany.

The American man gives her a horse.

 _Be careful, Dr. Maru,_ he says as she snatches the reins from his outstretched hand. She wants to refuse- to accept even _more_ help from him and his mysterious companion is almost more than her waning pride can bear. But he murmurs something about an approaching blizzard, and she knows he is right. She's already shivering from the cold, and she can feel her own weakness in her bones; she will die long before she reaches the German border.

But perhaps that's what she had wanted.

She rides at a steady pace until nightfall, listening between every footfall for a shout, watching the endless stretch of trees for a figure in bright armor. But no one appears. She is alone.

* * *

She reaches a village shortly after sunset, and pulls her cloak low over her scarred face as she searches the saddlebags. _They_ had repeatedly taken everything from her- the Germans when they captured her, the villagers when they drove her out one after the other, and the solemn immortals when they rescued her. Isabel suppresses a hiss of rage at the flood of memories, but what had she expected? The war was over, and she had lost.

Her grasping fingers brush against a coin purse, and she mumbles a begrudging thanks to the smuggler for having the foresight to know that she could not travel penniless. But a thrill of amazement runs through her as she draws the heavy purse from the saddlebags. She does not know how the American came by so much money in a war-torn country. And she does not know why he gave it to _her_.

The innkeeper mistakes her slight figure for a young traveling soldier. But she did spend nearly three years on the run, and she is not an amateur to disguises. She slaps a few grimy coins onto an oaken table, then leads the horse to the stables. She is gone before the sun rises again in the morning.

* * *

It takes her four weeks to reach Madrid. The gleaming cathedrals and dirt roads are still the same as when she left for the war. Spain somehow had managed to remain neutral and relatively unscathed throughout the Great War, but she… she had left Madrid with far deeper scars than the war would ever give her. And homecoming is somehow more painful than any moment she experienced during her time in the German army.

Napi’s horse obediently picks its way across the snowy cobblestones. Isabel’s knuckles are white as they grip the reins.

* * *

The man looks frightened- either of her scars, or of her blazing eyes, but he has the audacity to beg as he crouches in the doorway of her father’s old house, pleading for mercy, insisting that he had paid his rent.

“Rent? _Rent?!”_ Isabel’s vision quivers, and for a moment she grasps at her pockets, fingering the makeshift poisons she had concocted along her journey- powders found in dusty apothecaries, crude syrups mixed from medicines she had wrangled from poor village pharmacists.

“ _Por favor… Por favor...”_

“Liar! There is no one- pay rent- to _who?!”_ Isabel rages, ignoring the cowering figures of the man’s wife and daughter further up the dark hallway. Ignoring the memories their trembling figures stir up in the back of her mind.

“To _Don_ Maru! _Don_ Pedro Maru! _Please-”_

 _“_ That is a LIE! _THAT IS A LIE!”_

She leaves the man and his sniveling family unconscious. Killing them would have been too easy, and besides, they give her the address of their so-called landlord. If anyone needs to die, it’s this imposter, and if she can’t find him, she may need to return for more information.

* * *

The butler tries to shut the door in her face, but Isabel’s eyes darken and she pushes past without a word. The old man shouts, and uniformed servants rush forward, confused, disorganized. But Isabel Maru was once the most powerful woman in Europe, and the most feared woman in the world. She briefly considers poisoning or at least disarming her so-called brother’s workforce as they hurry forward, but then the master of the house appears, pushing his way out of the dining room, his voice raised in alarm at the ruckus.

His dinner napkin is still in his hand.

She almost doesn’t recognize him.

After all, it had been a child who waved goodbye to her that day at the train station. A child, barely out of boyhood. A child, still too young to feel shame at the tears welling in his eyes.

_Pedro…_

_“Don_ Maru- this woman, I am so sorry- she claims- your sister-”

But the butler’s halting voice falls to silence at the sight of his master standing paralyzed in the middle of the hallway, amazement and hope springing into his eyes.

He moves forward. The napkin drops from his hand.

_“Isabel?”_

He is fat.

But then again, she never had been able to feed him as much as a growing boy ought to eat, no matter how much she haggled over scraps at the marketplace.

“No… it is impossible… they told me you had died in prison. In Deutschland.” His voice is strained. Nearly as strained as hers.

“They told _me_ you died at sea.” Her voice is curt. Cold. Accusing.

He stares at her, struggling to speak. She waits.

“But you promised…”

“What did I promise?”

“You promised to never embarrass me.”

And finally she believes. They were the last words they had said to each other when she was seventeen and he was nine, as they stood together on the platform. Her, about to board a train headed to Germany. Him, about to board a ship bound for South America. She had dismissed his childish attempts at affection, and at last they had settled on promising to live fully, to live freely, and to _never_ embarrass each other...

_Oh, Pedro._

He reaches out and embraces her like a child.

She doesn't allow herself to weep. But she doesn’t push him away.

* * *

The first thing he asks her is what happened with Johanna.

_Everything. And nothing._

She had forgotten that the last time they had corresponded, her letters had been full of light and joy and hope. Johanna had still been alive. They had still been happy.

The second thing she does in Madrid after finding her long-lost brother is visit the cemetery where her long-lost beloved was laid to rest. She had seen the pharmacy across from her father’s old home, and it is now a bakery. The owners were unfamiliar. And when she goes in and asks in a cold, rasping voice what had happened, the frightened baker says something about the pharmacist marrying and moving to Barcelona.

She screams in rage, and the baker runs into the street, shouting for the police. She narrowly misses being arrested within a week of returning to her hometown.

Johanna Schröder. That was her name. That was the name that was written on all of their love letters, that was the name written on their publications, that was the name that had been branded onto Isabel’s soul- and that was the name that would be written on her grave. Isabel brings with her a toxic acid and scalpel and scrapes that _man’s_ last name from her Johanna’s gravestone. Legal marriage be damned. They had loved each other relentlessly for _ten years_ , and nothing in the world would convince her that Johanna ever stopped loving her- it had always been Isabel who had been the fearless one, the fighter, the protector- and she had failed. She had failed to protect her wife from the world. She had failed to protect her from their prying eyes and whispering voices... and she had left her alone, to face them.

_Oh, Johanna._

The birds are singing.

It should be forbidden for birds to sing in a cemetery.

She stands alone, staring down at the worn gravestone. The cold stillness reminds her of another time and another world, barely a month ago, when she had walked through the trees, the birds chirping to the white sky, the sounds of an immortal warrior dueling with invisible enemies echoing behind her.

_You would have liked Diana._

The thought comes from nowhere.

But strong, fearless Diana, and soft, kind Johanna…

And somehow, Isabel, standing there between them. Isabel, with her black heart, and her wretched face, and her grating voice, and her damning, evil science, and evil ambitions, and evil thoughts, and evil desires…

A branch behind Isabel cracks, and she spins around, heart pounding out of her chest, half expecting to see the skeletal ghost of her dead wife gazing mournfully down at her, or the tall figure of a beautiful goddess in gleaming armor…

But there is no one. She is alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading!!! Half of this chapter is literally a fanfic of miss_belivet's "Johanna" so if you haven't yet, go read it!


	2. Regret

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Isabel begins to settle into her new life post-WWI.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW: minor character death, angst.

On the night Isabel arrives, Pedro apologizes for the absence of his wife.

_She is upstairs, resting. It has been difficult for her. Very difficult._

Isabel wants to go up to see her right away, the last two weeks of traveling on horseback through the snow-laden wilderness forgotten, and Pedro tries to insist that she eat first. But she scoffs, impatiently waving away his words, and he pauses, apparently noticing for the first time the rough, makeshift mask covering the left side of her face. She had cut it from a scrap of leather she had stolen from a tanner in France, but it is a poor substitute for cool porcelain–or living skin.

_Isabel… sister, what did they do to you?_

_It is nothing._

He looks wounded. She wants to roll her eyes, but something twinges in her chest, and she looks away.

_Let me look over your wife, fool, and then I will instruct your cooks on what to prepare for supper._

* * *

Her name is Carmen. She had loved Pedro when he was poor, and remained unchanged by his success. But her pregnancy has left her weak, shivering, and moaning wretchedly in her sleep. The nurse attending her glares suspiciously at Isabel, but she bows her head and moves aside at a soft command from Pedro.

Isabel steps forward into darkened room, assessing her sister-in-law with narrowed eyes. For so long, pain and suffering had been her joy, her goal, her purpose in life. And it is not without a shiver of delight that she watches as the miserable woman tosses and turns.

But she feels a pang of guilt as she thinks back on it, later.

* * *

The baby is born three months after her return, and from the first moment she hears his weak, wet cough, she knows that he will not last three more. Pedro pleads, and she gathers the necessary chemicals needed to create a serviceable cure, but she once watched her mother give birth to child after child, never to see them survive past infancy. Isabel knows death when she sees it.

They bury him in the graveyard beside their parents and siblings, and Carmen is inconsolable for weeks. Isabel never understands why she calls upon her, a stranger, to walk with her through the lavish gardens at her and Pedro’s countryside home. But together they walk, up and down the cobblestone paths, under trellises thick with bougainvilleas, past carefully manicured beds of flowers and shrubs and grasses. Isabel tells her which ones are poisonous. Carmen asks her about her studies in Germany. Isabel asks about her childhood on the harbor in Barcelona.

Once, Isabel relents and agrees to attend some function in honor of her brother. It is the first time she has been to any such event since the gala in Belgium, since the night that she lost everything. But Pedro introduces her to the newly elected Prime Minister, and the old man’s eyes glimmer when he presents her as _my elder sister, the greatest chemist in Spain._ Isabel doesn’t care for Miguel Primo de Rivera’s pompous manners, or the way his gaze is indulgent as he looks down on her, but he is the leader of the military and of the new dictatorship, and when he offers her a job as he leads her across the ballroom floor, she accepts.

* * *

Isabel finds Pedro beside his son’s grave on Christmas morning, and when he waves her forward, she makes some bitter comment about the inevitability of death following in her wake. But Pedro scoffs, his hand heavy on her shoulder, his eyes bright with unshed tears.

_Don’t say such things, Isabel. The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away._

And Isabel watches him stride away, his head bent like a broken man's. And a vision stabs into her as she watches his faltering steps, because he looks so much like their father now, their cold, inconsolable father who had for years wandered drunk and crying through their house, weeping for his dead wife at all hours of the night, unseeing as Isabel came to him and gripped his hands and tried to wake him from his grief. Memories from years long gone, from a time better left forgotten.

The wind whispers through the dead grass, and Isabel closes her eyes. Once, she had devoted her life to this. Once, a dead child would have meant nothing to her. But that was when everything was lost, and she was alone. And Pedro was dead at sea. And Johanna had rejected her; her own wife had hated and feared her so much that she could no longer bear to walk the same earth as her. And Diana–her terror, her redeemer–had been a distorted vision, a nightmarish swirl of memories from a terrible night.

_For a moment, I hated as well._

_What made you stop?_

_You._

She never thought she would see Pedro again. That foolhardy boy who dreamt of the sea and discovering other worlds. She never thought she would see Diana again and live to tell of it, much less live to kiss her, touch her, hold her.

Isabel stares down at the freshly dug grave, still unmarked. For a moment, she can imagine Johanna moving quietly to stand behind her. Johanna’s hand in hers, her peaceful, beautiful face solemn. She would have been dressed in black, her delicate hands sheathed in velvet gloves, her pale skin and hair veiled. She would have embraced Carmen and give her the words of comfort she needed, the words that never came easily to Isabel’s lips. She would have made everything right, she would have known what medicines to give the child, to give life. Isabel could only ever deal the hand of death.

_I still loved you, Johanna, and you promised to love me. Why did that mean nothing to you?_

The memories of Johanna fall away, as if driven out by the bitterness of her thoughts, and for a moment, Isabel can imagine Diana moving through the shadows, emerging from the fringe of trees lining the horizon, her armor gleaming. Isabel stares at her hungrily, warily, still fearful that the woman’s eyes will be hard and wild with rage, fearful that she has come at last to reap the life she spared all those years ago. But her pretty lips are parted as she hurries forward, her eyebrows drawn together with concern.

_Oh, Isabel. What have they done to you?_

_Diana… Diana..._

She reaches out like a child to touch the metal gauntlets, to brush her cold fingers against the muscled forearm. It is a bitter winter morning, but the goddess’ skin is hot, and a comforting warmth envelops her as Diana draws Isabel into her arms.

_Oh, Princesa… why did I ever run from you?_

_Many things have broken you, have they not? But you are strong._

_No, Diana... not strong enough…_

_No?_

The tall figure pulls away and Isabel shivers as the cold rushes into her once more. Diana’s eyes are hard, a flicker of rage creeping into the warm irises. Then she leans forward, and her lips burn as they press hungrily against her own—pressing through her mask as if it is not there—hot fire blazing through her scar, leaving her lightheaded, gasping in pain—and then there is a voice in her ear, cold and accusing.

_You were strong enough to leave me._

“Isabel?”

A prick of winter wind cuts into Isabel’s skin and she opens her eyes. The graveyard is silent, muffled by a low-hanging cloud of fog. The sun is rising. The dead, leafless branches are waving overhead, the spindly twigs clanking against one another as the wind rises. Carmen is standing, veiled against the cold, at the edge of the path.

“Isabel, sister. Come.”


	3. Warmth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two years pass. Isabel received a graveside visitor.

* * *

The Prime Minister offers her a choice of homes, but it is Pedro who oversees the arrangements and chooses the servants from his own staff to run her household, to make her food, answer her door, and drive her through the city.

And every day, long after the sun has given way to the peaceful quiet of the night, Isabel emerges from the lab, and the driver is waiting patiently, and he drives her home without a complaint. And more often than not, she ignores the butler’s murmured offerings of food, goes directly to her rooms, changes for bed, and lies awake between silk sheets, staring up at the high ceiling.

Sometimes her mind is still spinning with theories, chemicals, experiments. What went wrong in the past. What might go right in the future.

But other times, the softness of the pillows, the sheets, and the intimacy of being in her bedchambers awaken within her a feeling that otherwise lays dormant… sometimes she thinks of Pedro and Carmen, dreaming together across town, sometimes she thinks of Ludendorff’s wife, driven out of Berlin and living with her third husband in Bavaria… sometimes she thinks of Diana and Napi, racing together across land and sea, perhaps at this very moment saving the world like the fierce god creatures they are…

If she had waited for Diana to return, spoken with her, allowed herself to put to words her longing for home and her plan to return to Spain, would she be here beside her now? Next week? Next month? Would the butler hand her letters on a silver tray every evening, letters written in fluent Spanish, or German, or English? Would she be asleep in this very bed every night when Isabel returned from the lab, and awaken only to press her down into the sheets as tenderly and gently as she had that night in Germany?

Sometimes, Isabel wakes late the next morning feeling guilty, wretched, childish. But it is easier to let dreams dissipate with the light of the sun, to let her loneliness and desire wash away with the warm, fragrant water of the bath. She is Dr. Isabel Maru, the greatest chemist in Spain, in all of Europe, and she must devote her time and energy to her work, her contributions to her field and her country.

The butler loads a basket containing her meals for the day into the car, and she sweeps down the steps of her grand mansion, ready for yet another long day in the lab.

But always, without fail, she directs the driver to make one stop before leaving the city for La Marañosa. Always, she begins her day beside Johanna’s grave, staring at the name etched into the headstone, kneeling down on the cold grass, promising promises that she will never be able to keep.

* * *

Two summers pass.

The years have been quiet, but unrest is stirring in the south, and the Prime Minister had ordered the production of mustard gas to be used against the rebels in Morocco.

_Too long, we have depended on Germany for these weapons, but now- now! We have the means to seize victory based on the strength of Spain alone._

Isabel had disregarded Miguel Primo de Rivera’s grand proclamations as politely as she could, but she could not ignore the thrill that raced through her as the lab, _her_ lab sang with the production of poisons once more.

* * *

Diana does not come.

The gases are deployed, hundreds of bombs are dropped daily, enemies are killed, the war begins to turn, and still Diana does not appear.

But one day, another does.

* * *

The chill of autumn is already evident in the rust creeping into the foliage, the brisk wind that rises and falls at will, the darkness that clings more and more closely to the morning hours.

There’s a tall figure waiting for her beside Johanna’s grave, a thin shadow nearly eclipsed by the sun shining through the morning fog. The grass is still wet with dew, and the cold droplets seep into Isabel’s hem as she pushes her way past the headstones to her beloved’s resting place.

It has been years upon years, but she recognizes that arrogant stance, the pale, delicate hand that rests against Johanna’s headstone, the whiff of sweet perfume that teases her long before they are within hearing distance of one another.

“I didn’t know anyone else knew.”

_But of course you would._

“Oh, Isabel.” The Baroness’ face is concealed, but her lip curls as she turns to face the approaching chemist. She is dressed like a widow in mourning, draped in black, her face hidden behind a glossimer veil of gray. _“Everyone_ knows.”

“That is not true.”

And it is not. Their old friends, classmates, men and women who had sneered in her and Johanna’s wake, who had stared openly with suspicious eyes: they were all dead, victims of her grief, her hatred, her poisons.

 _“I_ always knew.”

“Well, there is nothing to know now,” Isabel says harshly, the sun cutting through the Baroness’ filmy veil to reveal a glimmer of her blue eyes.

“Isabel…”

Her voice is gentle, and for a moment, Isabel remembers, and allows herself to soften. Her classmate had always been arrogant–too arrogant for her own good, and too power-hungry. That hunger had sent her to the bed of a rich Baron, and that arrogance had sent him to his grave. But Paula von Gunther was her friend. One of the only friends she had left. One of the only friends she hadn’t murdered.

“She always gave you a great deal more credit than you deserved,” Isabel says abruptly.

“She did that with everyone,” Paula dismisses. At the university, Isabel had delighted in the wicked wiles of her ruthless friend, but Johanna had always spoken graciously of Paula’s intelligence, quick wit, and loyalty as if those other, darker parts of her were nothing of concern. Johanna had always been too kind, too willing to forgive.

Until she hadn’t.

It is strange, to allow herself to remember those times. Back when they were students and warriors and champions of their own cause, dedicated to their own belief that their work would one day change the world and silence their critics and doubters.

“Why are you here?”

The Baroness shrugs, her smug face becoming serious for once.

“I was in the country. And I wanted to pay my respects-”

_“Please.”_

“And I wanted to _thank_ you,” Paula continues, ignoring Isabel’s disbelief.

“For what?”

“For not killing me when you had the chance. I know you… might have.”

“You kept moving.”

The Baroness laughs. It is a strange sound in such a deep, solemn place, but Isabel catches a glimpse of white teeth behind the sheer material. She shakes her head, and the other woman reaches out and lays a gloved hand on her arm. They are silent for a moment, both pairs of eyes on the headstone before them.

“You know as well as I do that life is temporary, that it is so much easier to terminate than to sustain. Stop killing yourself over her, Isabel. She made her choices.”

“I do not need you to comfort me. I am beyond all comfort.”

“Are you?”

Isabel frowns, raising her head to look the Baroness in the eye, but the sun has slipped behind a cloud, and a thin layer of expensive silk hinders her suspicious gaze.

“She searched for you for many years, your _savior._ It seems a pity to repay her like this.”

“I do not know what you are talking about.”

“Oh, Isabel- I may have been a second-rate chemist, but I was always an _excellent_ spy-”

“Then you will know that I refuse to become the puppet or- or plaything of some strange creature on a mission to cleanse my soul of my sins-”

 _“God,_ Isabel, are we talking about a woman or a priest?!” Paula von Gunther laughs, as she always does in the face of anger. Isabel hisses in irritation, and Paula seizes her other arm and draws her forward. Her face is close. The veil brushes up against Isabel’s cheek.

“It would do you good to love again.”

“The last time I loved, it brought me _here._ It brought us _both_ here,” Isabel snaps, waving a bony hand at the grave beside them.

“Then it is a good thing she is immortal.”

“I refuse to allow myself to dwell on something so flimsy as attraction or some... high-flown desire to redeem me of my crimes. She will _never_ forgive me, not now, not again.”

Paula stares at her for a long moment, then steps away and lifts her veil. Her face is older. Her lips are painted, her makeup precise, but her eyes are tired, and it is with damning familiarity that she reaches into the pocket of her coat and pulls out a box of matches and a cigarette.

“All of your extensive research on the effects of nicotine, and you learned nothing?” Isabel scoffs.

“Of course not,” Paula mutters, lighting the cigarette and then blowing out a thin cloud of smoke. It rises to envelope the water droplets in the air overhead.

“She broke you out of prison, you know.”

“What?”

“After the war, in Germany. She broke you out.”

“She did not. The innkeeper’s wife said…” _She said her husband found me crawling through the forest. Clothes ripped to shreds, still bleeding from the last interrogation, covered head to toe in mud from the tunnel I’d been digging for a month. I thought I had hallucinated my escape, forgot everything-_ “I told her I had been attacked by wolves.”

“As if any _wolf_ would go near _you.”_

“What do you mean she _broke_ me out?” Isabel snaps, dismissing the insult with an impatient wave of her hand.

“She attacked the prison, killed all of the guards, seized you from the floor, and carried you to the nearest village?”

“You’re lying. I escaped on my own. And she would never have killed all of those men like that. She’s too...” _Kindhearted. Too soft. Too gentle._ The delicious feeling of the goddess’ lips pressing against hers flits into her memory, and Isabel shakes her head, trying to fling the maddening thought away, back into the emptiness where it came from.

Paula shrugs. “She was angry.”

“That... that prison was completely isolated, no one knew- it wasn’t even in the German government’s records-”

 _“I_ knew.”

“What, were _you_ there, too?” Isabel snaps, sarcasm dripping from her words. “Did you collect the guards’ bodies for experiments after Diana left them for dead?”

_Diana._

The word sounds strange, spoken aloud.

She had whispered it to herself, tasting it on her tongue as the goddess consumed her. She had been smiling. They both were, afterwards, as they curled up together, in that warm room in that forsaken cabin. And she still… she still whispered it to herself. Sometimes. At night. When she could wallow in her grief no longer, when her loneliness became too much to bear.

“Of course not,” Paula is saying nonchalantly. Isabel startles and shakes her head again, trying in vain to pull herself away from her thoughts. “I had no interest in interfering with the imprisonment of some infamous war criminal. But I _did_ tell him where to find you- that man, that Blackfoot warrior. He’s quite helpful. Anytime I have a craving for a good English tea, he-”

“I am _quite_ finished with this conversation.” Isabel’s voice is shaking, and there is a strange warmth spreading through her. And she wishes Paula would hurry with her cigarette and pull her veil down once more, because at least then she might not catch a glimpse of the smile that Isabel is trying so very hard to suppress.

“She is a good woman, that Diana Prince,” Paula says softly, her dark eyes missing nothing as she studies Isabel’s face. “Too good for _you,_ certainly. But apparently not even _goddesses_ can choose who they will love.”

Paula’s cold fingers reach out and brush against Isabel’s unscarred cheek.

“Give her a chance, Isabel.”

And with that, she lowers her veil once more, kneels down beside Johanna’s grave, presses two fingers against the cold stone, then rises and walks away without another word.

“Paula…” Isabel calls after her. The figure stops, but does not turn around. “I _really_ should have killed you first, you know.”

And the Baroness gives a high laugh and disappears into the mist, leaving Isabel alone. She turns and kneels beside the headstone, reaching out to trace the deep letters of her beloved wife's name.

_Did you hear that, Johanna? Our Paula is an international spy now… and she is STILL conspiring against us…_

The warmth inside of Isabel lingers, and she stares for a long moment at the sharp lines etched into the stone.

Johanna Schröder...

_I promised I would not so easily forget you… but maybe…_

It is a thought better left unfinished. It is a chance she threw away the moment she stepped out of that cabin, the moment she took the reins from that man who had always frightened her but never intimidated her. It is a chance she denied herself the moment the Prime Minister stormed into her lab, raging about the Rif War.

Isabel rises and gazes across the still graveyard. The sun is shining through the trees. The grass is full and bright and alive. It is morning.

_Oh, Diana._

It is only a thought. A word. A plea. She will never answer, not now, as bombs of poisonous gases fall relentlessly across the villages and mountains of Morocco.

And yet… the warmth inside of her spreads.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things I'm sorry for:  
> 1\. The WAIT for this chapter  
> 2\. The LENGTH of this chapter
> 
> But in all seriousness, thank you so much for reading!! Thus concludes this little _Hatred_ companion-filler. The year at the end of this fic is 1924, so there's still about 8 months before Sammy is killed in Morocco and Diana comes to find Isabel.
> 
> Also, this is a very esoteric kind of fic, and I really do appreciate any of you who made it through to the end. Thank you again, you are amazing! :)


End file.
